28 Answers

No difference,actually believe it or not most people that won the lottery,won by QP.
Winning the lottery has the same odds of getting attacked by Bigfoot and later on in the day a Yeti finishing you off !!

Numbers at random and here is why. wife and i play bingo about three nights a week. they have a $500.00 game called U Pick Em. you can pick your own numbers or you can let the computer pick your eight numbers at random. we use to pick our own numbers, without any luck. then, we switched to the random computer option. since changing, in the last 4 months, we have won 3 U Pick Em games by ourselves at $500 dollars each.

You cannot predict the numbers that will come out of a bingo ball machine. we now rely on luck and blessings from above.

” 5,000 times more likely to be struck by lightening in my life time
208 times more likely to be struck by lightening this year than win the powerball
* You are 16 times more likely to get killed driving 10 miles to claim your Powerball ticket than actually winning it in the first place
* Note: buying more lottery tickets does not increase your chances to win at all – its negligible unless you buying thousands and even then see your odds below
* If you spent $10,000 a week on lottery tickets it would take you 2,809 years to win
* If you spent $1 million dollars per year on lottery tickets it would take you over 146 years to win
* If every single person alive on the planet (6.5 Billion) bought a powerball ticket – only 44 people would win
* You are 8,117 times more likely to be murdered than win the lottery
* You are 213 times more likely to die in your bathtub
* You are 146 times more likely to die from a fireworks accident in your lifetime
* You are 208 times more likely to die from a dog bite
”

I’ve always viewed it like this,anyone winning a lottery has to be outrageously lucky same as anyone being killed in say a plane crash is similarly unlucky. I’m as unlikely to have either happen to me & I like those odds.

During one of my unemployed times I downloaded the current list of winning lottery numbers for Texas and wrote a program that would take six numbers and see if there was a match for three or more numbers. I found that any combination I entered had been a “winner” for at least three of the numbers.

This leads me to believe that picking one number and staying with it will get you at least a three or four number match. How long that would take is entirely a different matter.

Using a coin toss, for example, if you changed your guess every time the coin was flipped you could (if you were me) continue losing forever. If you always choose “heads” you will eventually win.

I wouldn’t take my word, though. I know nothing about statistics and don’t even give money to the lottery commission.

@grumpyfish It might, but it would be very unlikely. I’m pretty sure if I stick with heads I’ll win eventually.

@bob_ I suppose. But then there’s the psychological affect. If I played the same six numbers for years and then decided to change it up with a quick pick and then found out that the numbers I’d been playing for years popped up for the $216M pot—Well, I think I’d jump off a bridge.

The only advantage I can see to playing the same numbers is the ease in memorizing and checking the results. You waste less time finding out that you lost, and have more time to do something productive.

That is, if I flip a coin 10 times, there’s a 0.09766% it’ll be all heads. 365 flips, I’m down to 1.331×10^-108% (a very very small number) that it’ll never come up tails.

However, if we’re dealing with a pick-three system, we have 1:1000 chance of winning, so the odds that any one number comes up is 1:1000—or on average once every three years. Except previous numbers can be drawn again, so it’s possible that your number won’t be drawn.

For instance… I ran three years of triple digit numbers through wolfram alpha (here—you’ll get different numbers than I did). 777 came up twice, 555 never came up.

There are actually better numbers to play depending on the game. If the jackpot is split amongst all winners, you can increase you payout by choosing a number that no one else would. Popular numbers such as all 1s, numbers that could be birthdays, and other pattern numbers will reduce your payout. Just choosing random numbers all the time won’t work because some of the popular numbers may come up in your random selection. Just have a random number generated, check that it isn’t one that someone else would have any reason to play, and always play that number.

A couple in my area bought a lottery ticket. On their way home the woman noticed that the numbers she picked where not like she wanted them to be so she asked her husband to return to the store to change them. They did and they won 8 million that same night.

I’m just guessing here, as I am not good at statistics, but I figure the following: Let’s say I play a 6/45 game twice a week (around 8.14 million to one chance each time); if I buy 1,000 tickets for one draw I would have one in 8,140 chances of winning (1/8.14M + 1/8.14M + 1/8.14M…), right?; now assume the opposite: the draw will produce one thousand results to match my fix set during the next 9.5 years. If I keep buying the same numbers, I will have reduced greatly the odds against my bet—and I’d also be a lot closer to getting 5 of 6—. Although far from a guaranteed prize, I imagine I’d be helping luck. Please tell me if this is wrong.